slice of lime

“When we started, we didn’t want to play covers, we wanted to kind of figure the music out for ourselves and find our sound. So, what we would do is put ourselves in Tyler’s basement with the lights off and play whatever came to us without looking at each other or knowing what the other person was playing. We’d just hear the music in the room and play and that’s how we formulated our sound, going off that connection and learning how to rely on each other.”

Much like their influential predecessors, the Rolling Stones and the Doors, this band manages to merge pulpy basslines with a gingery, off-kilter rock sound that keeps you on your toes. “Last Night” on their Camera Jams Artist Session embodies this open passion for rock revival, but “West Coast” makes it clear that The Dirty Turkeys are not just interested in mere nostalgia. The song’s jangly guitars and hypnotic rhythms merge with clear surf rock influence, over which the lead singer’s voice drizzles with a charismatic echo.

“Space Man” pushes them more into the heavier 70s rock like Led Zeppelin, the guitars loose and raw, and “Tender Spinach” pulls into psychedelia. This meld of similar genres lets the Dirty Turkeys give a class in texture, each song gritty and honest.

“I mean for me, personally, it’s the thing in the world I care most about and whether it’s drums or just listening to music or learning a new instrument or anything, music is the only thing I’ve found that really speaks to me.”

Interview

How did you guys meet? How long ago did this start for you?

Bradley: Well, me and Danger here, we’re brothers. I went to preschool with Sam, so I’ve known him since preschool. We’ve all been very passionate about music our whole lives, but the three of us weren’t technically musicians until around when COVID hit. Then Sam and Ross decided to start playing and picking up instruments. It had always been a dream of mine to be a vocalist and the frontman in a band, so we decided to get the Dirty Turkeys together.

Ross: I met Tyler when I was playing with, or trying out for, Barefoot in the Bathroom. That was his band at the time. We ended up really hitting it off and listening to Led Zeppelin together for like 4 hours on the night we met, and we’ve been best friends ever since. He moved around a bunch of different bands in Boulder for a while until he settled and stayed with us.

Tyler: Yeah, Sam and I played together in a different band and then he was like, ‘you got to come meet my friend, Danger.” I said ok, and then I met up with Danger and we jammed together. When we put our first show together we had a moment where it was like, ‘we got something here’. Then we met up with Gonzo.

How did the music start exactly? Did you decide this is what we all like? Was there a decision moment where you decided, this is what we are?

Ross: I think we all kind of fell in love with similar types of music, largely stemming off of late 60s psychedelic rock like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Doors, Led Zeppelin. From that point, we sort of catapulted into putting our own takes on those songs and formulating our own sound. When we started, we didn’t want to play covers, we wanted to kind of figure the music out for ourselves and find our sound. So, what we would do is put ourselves in Tyler’s basement with the lights off and play whatever came to us without looking at each other or knowing what the other person was playing. We’d just hear the music in the room and play and that’s how we formulated our sound, going off of that connection and learning how to rely on each other.

Bradley: Growing up, me and my brother we’re always sending each other music and whatnot. So, all four of us are self-taught which is another positive because we’re playing songs we love to hear.

Tyler: We started in this little basement I had where we could play and they would come over literally every night and we would play for hours and hours, writing music. We didn’t really learn very many cover songs, but we just would write music and were all on the same page of loving rock’n’roll and blues. We had really similar music tastes, so writing music was just song after song.

Ross: It was very interesting how fast the writing process happened, and that’s why it really felt right for us to stay together.

Sam: None of us had musical backgrounds either. We were all self-taught, so there was really no structure in any of our playing. We would just start making sounds with our instruments and say this sounds good, and our words fell on top of that. It’s interesting listening back on our first recordings because the songs are really just unlike anything I’ve ever heard. They’re very unique sounds. The song structures, the lyricism, everything put together is very far from the norm and as we’ve progressed we’ve moved closer to that. But, we found our sound in that balance between obscure instruments, obscure sounds, and more general. Our original stuff was fully experimental.

Tyler: It was honestly pretty tough for us to go back and revisit some of those songs when it was time to record them because they were just so out there.

Bradley: Going off what Ross was saying earlier, being all self-taught there was no hierarchy, so there’s a mutual respect between the four of us. There’s a beautiful action between the four of us, where we can just kind of read each other’s minds without really having to talk. We all became best friends through that as well, which has been a really cool experience.

One of the things I first wrote down while researching and listening to you guys is that I thought there was a real intention about authenticity in the music, is that on purpose?

Sam: I mean it’s not like we were going for that, it’s just what happened, fortunately.

Tyler: These three guys are my best friends in the world and I would spend every day with them regardless of whether we were in a band or not. So, the fact that we just happened to be in a band together is just a plus.

Bradley: I think it comes from not doing covers purposefully, like a lot of the bands that we were playing with were only doing covers and we made a point that we’d rather play a show that was brand new music. We wrote the night before or the day of. We’ve done gigs where we’re playing something in the car and played in that night. We like to look at music in less of a monetary or structured way and have more of a creative feel to it. I think that’s where the authenticity shows through.

There is a big rock revival movement happening in Colorado right now, if you had to pinpoint something that you think makes you guys a bit different, what would you say it is?

Bradley: I think our live shows have a unique amount of energy. Typically, in a four-piece, the singer will be playing an instrument, but I don’t. I think being strictly vocal adds a lot of energy and movement.

Ross: Our exceptional ability to enter the hypnotic trance.

Bradley: I don’t really know how to explain it. When we’re on stage like time slows down, it’s very hypnotic.

Ross: We’re not just playing regular stages. We’ll just go out into the desert and play festivals. That’s more of what we’re interested in doing. We like strange gigs, especially in nature.

Bradley: We busk a lot too, we love to just play on the street. A good gig is a good gig, but I think we get a lot of personality and respect because we’ll just go anywhere and start playing, whether it’s in the middle of the woods, middle of the desert, middle of a snowstorm, middle of the street.

Tyler: The four of us are all such unique individuals, we all have something to offer. If someone’s in the crowd and they love to watch the singer, then we have Bradley up front with his shirt off screaming his heart out. If they love to watch bass players, Sam’s on his knees or laying on his amp ripping the bass. We’re all such unique individuals that there’s something in this band for everybody, no matter what they’re interested in.

You guys are a newer band, but what do you feel have been some defining moments for you? How has that impacted you?

Sam: I think my favorite moment was when Tyler finally had given up the other bands stuck with us. Huge difference and it made all the sense. I think that’s my biggest thing.

Ross: I would say the defining moment for me in the band was when we played a set on the top of the mountain in the desert this past October at this local festival called Electric Honey. It was just an exceptional environment to play in and we had everyone come up to the top of this mountain and just jammed out with us, we stretched out like 300 feet of extension cord and had a generator. The sun was setting and it was just a moment to be remembered forever.

Bradley: I would say we’ve played some really cool venues, but some of the defining moments for me have been the little Boulder house parties. The crowd just brings the energy.

Tyler: For me, it was one specific gig we had at a house party where we were in the corner and the house was very, very packed. There were probably like a hundred, a hundred-plus people there and everyone was jumping up and down and the floorboards started bouncing. The owner of the house came running downstairs and was screaming at us to turn the music off, but we just kept playing and those floorboards stayed.

If you had to describe your music to someone whose never heard it before, how would you go about describing your sound?

Tyler: Trance-inducing. A lot of our music is quite experimental and some stuff I’ve never heard before. It’s easy to get lost in.

Sam: Rich. There’s a lot of flavors coming from every angle. I mean, Ross listens to the strangest music I’ve ever heard in my life and we also all listen to some really strange music. I’d say it all just comes together in a big, rich cheesecake of songs.

Bradley: We have a lot of new music coming out in the next couple of months as well. All four of us have been all over the world these last five months. We actually haven’t all been together in a while, but before we left, we recorded two albums that were slowly starting to release now. So, I think it’s going to be cool to see how people gravitate towards this kind of new psychedelic indie rock sound.

That new sound, is that something you found has come from traveling, or is that something you have been searching to make?

Ross: I would say it’s a culmination of both of those things. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to classical Indian music. I play guitar and I know Sam was recently traveling in Morocco and that had a big influence and how he’s been manipulating the bass waves.

Bradley: I was recently in Vietnam and that really solidified in my brain and moving forward that had an impact on me.

Tyler: I was out in Spain and I was just amazed at how every little dice bar that had a band playing the drummer was just like 10x as good as I was. I was just amazed at how amazing all those musicians were.

What do you count as major influences, whether it be musical or non-musical?

Ross: I would say one of my biggest influences is the flow of nature. An electrical guitar is an electronic pulse if you simplify it down, and that is simply just electrons moving in a certain configuration and working with transistors. So, my favorite guitar sound is just the raw sound of a Telecaster which emulates the present moment almost better than anything else I can think of. That’s just pure consciousness, pure flow of nature.

Bradley: Nature is a big influence as well, and more so is animals like a wolf’s howl. Why is that in tune, you know? It’s like Frank Sinatra hitting these high notes and he’s had voice training to do this, he did that, but there’s something so pure about it. When an animal makes its pure sound that’s music to me. Rhythms and nature.

Sam: Also, Jimi Hendrix.

Bradley: We really like the band influence like Brian Jonestown Massacre, Jim Morrison, the Venus cleaners from Venus, Zeppelin, the Velvet Underground. All those and a little bit of Mac DeMarco here and there. Can’t hurt. You know, a little Mac can’t hurt.

This question is a bit ambiguous, but why music? What’s brought you here? What do you love about it? Why are you in a band?

Tyler: I mean for me, personally, it’s the thing in the world I care most about and whether it’s drums or just listening to music or learning a new instrument or anything, music is the only thing I’ve found that really speaks to me. I think that it is something that will be part of my life for the rest of my life, one way or another. This band is going to be the vehicle that I’m able to play drums in for the rest of my life, which I’m super excited about.

Bradley: I’m a very visual artist, something I realized pretty recently, so I don’t think it had to be music. However, I do know that music makes me feel incredibly good and a lot of the things that we produce I think of visually, but I try to make my instrument a paintbrush.

Sam: I think at the basis of every living thing, every entity in the cosmos is a vibration and we are so inherently connected to sound and the cosmic wiggle.

Bradley: I really enjoy the process of creating, with art and especially with music. You’re allowed to express yourself and there’s no true right way to do it. I think what the Dirty Turkeys are doing is really unique because we’re expressing. The four of us are similar in a lot of ways and different in a lot of ways, but it comes out through the music which is a very unique sound. There’s no right way to make a song, it’s just what we deem best, and at the end of the day that idea of the creative process is addicting and rewarding, especially when you’re doing it with the people you love.

Earlier you mentioned some new projects maybe being more psychedelic. Where do you guys feel like your music is evolving?

Bradley: Yeah, definitely more psychedelic. I think with all the places that we’ve been traveling to recently, there’s been a new slew of instrumentation that we’ve been incorporating into our new sound. This new album, especially the one that’s releasing in September called Cowboy Caravan, has a lot of different influences from around the world. It’s got a lot of unique variations of sound that we were able to experience separately in all these different corners of the planet and come together and express as one. So yeah, psychedelic is a good way to describe it.

Ross: I mean, yeah, the word psychedelic inherently means mind manifesting so. I think all of us have had the wonderful privilege to travel around and experience different sorts of music, and even in our homes using good old tools like Spotify and vinyl. All of that kind of comes together in our own minds, and we bring a different thing to the table on each instrument. Sometimes I’ll hear Tyler playing crazy rhythms I’ve never even heard of that somehow, he found. He was influenced by Africa and Tasmania and Latin America, places like that. So, it all comes together, and it really is psychedelic at the end of the day.

Bradley: I actually wanna use the word you used earlier, ambiguous, I think in a way that covers a lot of what our sound is, which is just very curious. It’s a very curious sound. It’s always reaching towards something new, it’s reaching towards a new audience, it’s authentic and original, it’s not to be fucked with.

This new project, what have you found the creative process to be like, is there anything outside the music that impacted the process for you?

Tyler: We went to a Denver studio called Colorado Sound and we had 24 songs prepared and ready to go. They were split in half between two albums, and we took two days and did two 12-hour sessions. I think we went like 8 am to 8 pm, something like that. It was a lot of hard work for us and the Colorado Sound engineers, but we got them recorded. The first album we’re putting out I’m very excited about, I love that album so much.

Ross: We work together and we work pretty fast, just because we’re able to communicate as friends.

Bradley: There are only so many bands that could be trapped for 12 hours with no sunlight in like a sweaty, hot recording studio. Not only just to be there, but to be creating something and creating something with other people in general, whether it’s a group project or you’re in business or you’re an artist, it is very difficult because you all see things in different ways and music. Especially because you can’t visually show what you’re hearing in your head. So, I think there’s something to be said that we were able to crank out two 12-hour sessions and 24 songs in those sessions and leaving that there’s nothing but positivity, laughter, and good times.

This first album, is there a set release date?

Bradley: It will be out in early September. People can follow our social channels, there’ll be updates with that. We have singles coming out within that time too.

Tyler: Also, we’ve got a big West Coast tour coming up this summer where we’ll be going all over and we’re announcing that in the next couple of weeks. Our album is set to come out right when we get back from tour. We’ll be in California, Wisconsin, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and Colorado.

Is there a main theme or thought behind this album or is more of an exploration of your sound?

Ross: Exploration, I would say.

Sam: I don’t really know how to express what this album is about. It’s all our different influences, like Danger is very influenced by Indian music and culture and we were talking about how we traveled around a bunch in the last year. It’s kind of a culmination of that. An expression of our music.

Bradley: The music we’re releasing first is before we started traveling, so there’s definitely some influence in that because we’re adding instruments and stuff. But I’d say it’s more of our collective consciousness. We were all writing and a part of the creation process of the songs, so between the four of us, it’s really a collective consciousness. It’s going to be interesting when we start releasing more songs and seeing the feedback from people because it’s definitely a unique sound. You know, we’re not following the standard for most songs like first chorus catchy, Tik-Tok type songs. They’re more like Brian Jonestown-esque, more experimental and the lyrics mean more than the actual song structure.

Ross: I think it’s important to note the album is called Cowboy Caravan and that stems from each of us kind of thinking about the way of cowboy living, living off the land, appreciating the land, and taking inspiration from everything around you. Living a tough and gritty life, and then caravan inherently means you’re traveling and exploring new things at all times. You never sit still, you’re never comfortable in one place. Each of us had individual journeys so this first album is a culmination of all of that. There’s no set theme other than that it’s just like all of us coming together for the first time and putting that on a record.

One of the major themes I like to talk about is community, especially in the music scenes. I am based out of Fort Collins, but am familiar with the Boulder scene as well. What do you guys feel makes Boulder, or even just Northern Colorado, a good scene or a great scene?

Bradley: The people, people love live music and it’s just the coolest thing ever. The people that come out to support us or when we go support other live bands. I agree with you, I think there’s somewhat of a revolution going on with live music right now. Like, when we all went off to college it was all about the DJs, EDM music. That’s still popular, but live music is just so, so special. I think it hits people deeper seeing the instrumentation, seeing the art being created in front of them. Especially after COVID, when people weren’t allowed to go see live music for years. The years coming out of that really sparked a sense of community, especially around the Colorado area when everyone is just so laid back and cool and fun and outdoorsy. The live music scene kind of just started taking off. The people and our fans that come to our shows they’re really what keep us going. We love playing around Colorado, especially around Northern Colorado. It’s our home and there’s nothing like playing in the cool, crisp Colorado air.

Tyler: Yeah, when I got to college, there was maybe one band in the Boulder music scene and now there’s probably 40 or 50. Live music has blossomed in the last four years and like Bradley was saying, it’s just the people. There are such great people out here in Boulder and Northern Colorado, they just love live music so much.

What do you think makes a good crowd or good partners on stage? What do you look for in that?

Sam: Positive energy and really just not holding back. A good crowd is one that is dancing, and a good stage partner is one that is also dancing. I think energy levels are very important.

Bradley: Being present, when I look at my bandmates on stage, I always have Ross standing left to me and Sam to the right of me and then Tyler behind me and just seeing their focus. Sam will be so deep in his set and his head will be on the bass amp. Looking to my right and seeing my brother and his eyes are in the back of his head and he’s just in another dimension, or I look behind me and Tyler’s mouth is open and he’s sweating his ass off, playing as hard as you can. That to be is presentness. It fuels me to be better. The same thing from the crowd, when the crowd is not on their phones, not afraid to get close. I think because I’m a front man, I move around a lot, and I dance a lot like sometimes people in the front get a little freaked out. When the crowd is close and present, when they’re dancing and not in their heads, that just means the world to us. Because we feed off of that at the end of the day.

I try to do one stereotypical fun question in every interview because at the end of the day, this is all for fun. So, one of my favorites is, if you were stranded on an island and you could only listen to one album for the rest of your days, what would your album be?

Ross: Kind of Blue, Miles Davis.

Tyler: At this point in my life I would say Bon Iver, For Emma Forever Ago.

Sam: Operation Doomsday. MF Doom.

Bradley: Split Coconut, Dave Mason. That’s the answer right there.